Tags
2000's, Alice Krige, Christophe Gans, Deborah Kara Unger, Horror, Jodelle Ferland, Kim Coates, Laurie Holden, Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Silent Hill, Tanya Allen
Film Title
Silent Hill
Director
Christophe Gans
Starring
- Radha Mitchell as Rose Da Silva
- Sean Bean as Christopher Da Silva
- Laurie Holden as Cybil Bennett
- Jodelle Ferland as Sharon Da Silva
- Deborah Kara Unger as Dahlia Gillespie
- Kim Coates as Officer Thomas Gucci
- Tanya Allen as Anna
- Alice Krige as Christabella
For all its creepy visuals, well-designed sets and competent direction, Silent Hill falls surprisingly flat of the potential it could have reached. What could have been a truly terrifying and riveting adaptation of the video game is let down by a weak script and slow pace.
Rose Da Silva is concerned for the safety and health of her adopted daughter Sharon. For a long time, the young girl has experienced nightmares while sleepwalking, ending in her shouting the name of a town “Silent Hill”. While Rose’s husband Christopher wants to have the girl tested for psychological help, Rose doesn’t agree with this and takes drastic action. Taking Sharon with her after researching the town, she drives towards it in a quest for answers and truth. But on the way to it, Rose gets in a car accident and is knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, Sharon has disappeared. Rose then enters Silent Hill, which is covered in falling ash from a fire of long ago that devastated the town. Assisting her is cop Cybil Bennett, who witnessed Rose’s desperate attempts to reach the town. But as Rose ventures deeper into the town, the sinister past begins to emerge and the hellish depths of the place, which included religious fanaticism and witchcraft burning begin to engulf her. Meanwhile, Christopher frantically searches for his wife and daughter, and comes across the town only to find it to be an abandoned ghost town.
I must say that if Silent Hill was purely based on its style and overall visuals, I would declare it to be a masterwork. Christophe Gans confidently directs the film with panache, ratcheting up the creepy factor at every opportunity. And the fantastic sets of gloomy buildings that populate the eponymous town, filled with mutilated beings and bowels of hell are stomach churning at the very least. But as I’m judging the whole film, I really can’t step away from the flaws that riddle the film. I just feel that the technical aspects that at least make Silent Hill watchable can not save it from being a failure. The main issues I have with Silent Hill are the script, running time and the fact that it throws so many ideas at you without thinking about it. The script at times just feels lazily done, which results in some really bad dialogue. This also has a bad effect on the ideas it throws at you. Many of them have potential, but are not given enough meat on their bones to fully register. I also feel that if the running time had been toned down and given an injection of pace, I would have enjoyed it more. At least there is an unusual score to back up some of the suspense of the horror that occurs along the way.
At least, despite her character being sketchily written, Radha Mitchell shines in the role of Rose. She imbues her with a terrified core that is not going to be shaken as she goes head first into the pits of hell to retrieve her child. It may be something of a thankless role, but at least Radha Mitchell gives it something else. The same can be said of both Sean Bean and Laurie Holden, whose roles are not drawn well enough but they somehow manage to give that little bit extra to them. Holden especially gives her part her all and works well alongside Mitchell. Thank goodness we have these two actresses doing their level best when being given such poorly written and misguided material. Jodelle Ferland as the little girl whose dreams start the whole story is seen too infrequently during the film to really be memorable. Deborah Kara Unger, wrapped in grey sheets and scraggy hair, adds to the strangeness of the piece while Kim Coates is very bland as an officer who knows the history of Silent Hill. In small roles, Tanya Allen as a disturbed fanatic who babbles like a child and Alice Krige as the cult leader, add dashes of menace and malice to proceedings. Krige, although her role is small, makes the most of it and steals all the scenes in which she is present.
So to summarise, Silent Hill may be appropriately unusual and well designed, but is lacking in other departments which drags it down in estimations.
callummclaughlin said:
I totally agree that the visuals in this film are fantastic and it captures the creepy, hellish atmosphere of the series perfectly – but the script could have used some work.
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vinnieh said:
Thanks for commenting Callum. It was visually amazing but the rest just fell flat for me.
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The Telltale Mind said:
I thought it was pretty boring, the sequel too. Great effects like you said, but that was about it.
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vinnieh said:
I know, it just dragged on at such a sluggish pace.
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michael9murray said:
Oh yeees, I remember this now. You got its failing just right. Good blog!
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vinnieh said:
Thanks for your compliments.
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Paul Bowler said:
Wasn’t a fan of the story in this film, but the effects were very good, and the imagery was quite unsettling at times. Just a shame they didn’t put at much effort into the script as they did the special effects.
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vinnieh said:
HinPaul, nice to hear from you. Yes I agree that the effects and style were fantastic, but aside from that the movie failed to really interest.
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Paul Bowler said:
Hiya! Yes, totally agree, the film felt like a big missed opportunity. Silent Hill could’ve been such a scary film. I remember being very disappointed by this film.
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vinnieh said:
I hate it when a movie doesn’t live up to its potential.
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Paul Bowler said:
Me too, so much potential for Silent Hill as a movie, but sadly it didn’t work out very well.
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vinnieh said:
Such a shame. Just thought I’d let you know I’ve been trying out some new features on my blog. The main ones are gif posts and a naughty bit of fiction I wrote. Feel free to look through them.
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Paul Bowler said:
Cheers for letting me know, I’ll check those out. I tend to put trailers on my site, never used gifs though, not sure how that works.
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vinnieh said:
Hope you like my gif posts.
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Parlor of Horror said:
It didn’t have much more story than the video game which probably delighted the game fans but left the film as just a visual thing. I didn’t think it was slow, it just didn’t have much depth.
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vinnieh said:
Yeah there was a curious lack of depth to it.
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newguy87 said:
Did you play the game?
I enjoyed this one but i never played the games, but as a styled up horror film it didn’t rush scares and tried to make each scare effective and that scene with the nurses reacting to noise great.
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vinnieh said:
I’ve never played the game. I got to admit that scene with nurses was creepy as hell.
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Laura said:
This one had some super creepy visuals but the wafer thin story shows it to be an obvious computer game adaptation.
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vinnieh said:
I’m in full agreement with you Laura.
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drakulus23 said:
I liked the movie. It wasn’t as bad as those awful Resident Evil movies and since I’m not a Silent Hill fan I guess I didn’t mind watching it. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but I wouldn’t be against watching it on a boring Friday night with my wife if there was nothing else to do. The sequel was terrible though…
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vinnieh said:
Cheers for commenting. I always think adapting video games is a risky move.
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drakulus23 said:
Same. The Resident Evil movies sucked, the Doom movie sucked, and Silent Hill was okay, but it could have been much better. Here’s to hoping that Megaman is awesome :].
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vinnieh said:
Thanks for commenting. Have you seen my newer feature of gif posts? If not you should check them out.
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drakulus23 said:
I’ll look into them :].
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vinnieh said:
Cheers.
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Tom said:
Good review Vinnie. I had left this behind in the past apparently, completely forgot all about it. But that must say something about the overall quality, huh? Hahah
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vinnieh said:
You would be right there Tom.
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emmakwall said:
Very good review Vinnie, I agree with you 🙂 I’ve watched this a few times and every time it starts I think ‘yes, this is good!’ then it just tails off a bit and it just….doesn’t reach it’s full potential, like you say.
It’s a scary film and kinda horrible in places but easily forgettable. Shame really!
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vinnieh said:
It’s such a bummer when that happens with a film. You think that its gonna be amazing and then it just sort of fizzles out.
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emmakwall said:
Soooo annoying.
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vinnieh said:
It sucks.
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emmakwall said:
😦
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Khalid said:
I don’t know why studios persist on making movies about acclaimed video-games, they almost never work nor do they make any money.
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vinnieh said:
You make a very valid point Khalid.
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vampireplacebo said:
I liked this film. A lot. It actually scared me, and that’s not easy to do…
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vinnieh said:
I just felt that some of it could have been better. But I do respect your opinion.
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Keith said:
It was definitely visually compelling and it thought the story itself had some moments. But overall you know you should be getting something better, right.
It definitely has some good inspiration. SOME of the video games in the series are pretty good.
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vinnieh said:
If it was just the visuals, I’d declare it a great film. But everything else just doesn’t work that well.
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beetleypete said:
I started watching this on Film 4, and turned it off after about 20 minutes. But then, I never played the video game. (Or any others, after Sim City…)
Cheers, Pete.
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vinnieh said:
It’s such a waste of a movie.
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davecrewe said:
Nice review. I’m constantly tempted to check this out, but this suggests my time might be better spent elsewhere!
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vinnieh said:
A lot of the film is just a wasted opportunity.
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Van Rockingham said:
As a fan of the games I quite like the film. It is probably the best Game to Movie film , but that isn’t saying much.
The film relies too heavily on nods and winks to hardcore fans, so a lot of the plot holes come from that.
At the same time, the film tries to shoe horn things that don’t fit the games lore. The Nurses and Pyramid Head represent the sexual frustration of James Sunderland in the second game. In this, they are just monsters that don’t really make too much sense. They combine the weird cultyness of the first game, and the psychological monsters from the second film. So that is where it falls flat for me.
Too much AND too little homage to nerdy fanbois like me.
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vinnieh said:
I think if I’d played the game I might have enjoyed it a bit more. The whole thing just felt a bit hollow for me. It had the creepy visuals and that, but seemed to lack cohesion.
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Van Rockingham said:
It is hollow, and for all the reasons you point out. Knowledge of the games and what some things mean is helpful. But then I might just be filling holes with what I want to go there.
I still don’t know why Sean Beans charcater is in the film, they could have cut that whole story solving the run time/amount of story they tried to cram in issues.
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vinnieh said:
And I found that the film dragged on a bit, at times at a snail’s pace.
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